


Ask The Dust

by chewysugar



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 16:32:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: Tony will never forgive himself after this.





	Ask The Dust

Tony didn’t know what he’d expected.

To win?

Had the narrative of his extraordinary life truly fallen into such predictable patterns, that he always expected victory?

Steve hadn’t been a victory, even if the outcome had proven in favor of the side Tony had fought for. He’d lost friends, had bonds severed by his own shortsightedness. He’d gone against every principal and made a toy soldier out of a child.

And now, nothing.

After the end there should have been debris; there should have been ash and smoke. He should have screamed and torn at his hair in some act of Biblical despair.

But there was only emptiness. He couldn’t think or feel; he could only be. Either way he looked, blame lay in wait. The guilt would destroy him, wear him down as it always had.

Awake or sleeping, he heard the sounds of battle. Thanos laughed in Tony’s head whenever silence tried to assert itself. He smelled fire and blood; he saw them all chewed into nothingness by the bastard God’s power.

He heard Peter’s fear, saw the boy’s disbelieving eyes.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t want to go.”

Tony knew that no matter what he did to fight back—even if he found some way to undo what had been done—he would never forgive himself. The look on the kid’s face—that terrified tremor in his voice—left any kind of torture he’d faced, or may ever face, in the dust. 

He didn’t want to kill Thanos.

He didn’t even want to kill himself.

All that he wanted was the absolute end.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I haven’t been the biggest supporter of the MCU for the last several...years. But that was just not cool what the Russo’s did at all.


End file.
